


Circle and Square

by oceaxe



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Canon Compliant, First Time, M/M, Romance, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:13:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22721521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceaxe/pseuds/oceaxe
Summary: They’ve been doing this sharing of looks, this camaraderie, recently. It’s new for them. Always before there was a touch of heat in their interactions, but Arthur put it down to the friction of two incompatible personalities abrading each other.He’s no longer so sure they’re incompatible. And he’s starting to think a lot more about heat, and friction, and Eames.
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 95
Collections: Eames' Stupid Cupid 2020





	Circle and Square

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ravenclawkward](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenclawkward/gifts).



> For ravenclawinstarfleet, who prompted Soulmates or Tattoos. Happy Valentine's Day! 
> 
> Many thanks to my dear friend Deinvati for cheerleading and beta services, I am forever in your debt.
> 
> (there's a teensy reference to a Supernatural character in here, blink and you'll miss it, but it gave me great joy to insert Mr. Ketch and his terrible tattoo)

The architect is droning on about the psychological ramifications of the mark’s whatever and explaining how each floor of the dream structure represents a time in his life when blah blah blah. Arthur isn’t listening. Arthur is looking at Eames. At Eames’ midsection, in particular. Eames leans back in his chair, splayed out like a pasha per usual, and a finger sneaks in below his belt, scratching an itch. Arthur’s eyes follow that finger. 

There’s a tattoo that Arthur’s not meant to know about. But he does, he does know about it. 

Eames must feel Arthur’s eyes on him, because he looks over with one eyebrow raised, his lips in a little moue. Arthur inclines his head, acknowledging that he was staring, then cuts his gaze over to the architect, making a face. Eames looks down and chuckles softly, then raises his gaze with his head lowered. Their eyes linger on each other for a long moment, until the meeting is interrupted by lunch delivery.

He pushes the noodles around in the paper box then puts his chopsticks down to scratch his side. The motion catches Eames’ attention. Arthur flushes and turns away, a secret smile on his lips.

***

Four months ago

They’ve been doing this sharing of looks, this camaraderie, recently. It’s new for them. Always before there was a touch of heat in their interactions, but Arthur put it down to the friction of two incompatible personalities abrading each other. 

He’s no longer so sure they’re incompatible. And he’s starting to think a lot more about heat, and friction, and Eames. 

London is miserably, unseasonably hot and the seedy office they’re using as HQ swelters even at night. Arthur has taken to working in shirtsleeves so of course Eames feels justified in getting down to what he refers to as his “vest.” It’s white and cheap and thin enough that Arthur can see his chest hair and all his vast array of terrible ink. It makes him feel even more suffocated. He’d loosen his tie and top button if his tie weren’t already across the room and his top button undone along with the next three down. 

He can’t stop himself from trying to make out the indistinct shadows under Eames’ so-called shirt. It’s been three years since he last saw Eames sans top, not that he’s missed the sight nor counted the days since it happened. But obviously there are new tattoos, and a person can’t help being curious. He’s a research guy. Recon is a key part of research. 

That’s what he tells himself as he follows Eames down the hall to the restroom, after having yelled at him for reaching up under his ludicrous excuse for a shirt to scratch at something. 

“Sorry, it’s just a new tat,” Eames had said moments ago, and Arthur is still stuffing down his shame for losing control of his temper as he loses control in a different way, letting his feet stalk his teammate into the dank facilities.

He pauses for the space of a breath to let the door close all the way before he goes barging in. Eames is at the sink, his shirt pulled up on one side, poking at a small bandage. Arthur’s eyes skate haphazardly over the exposed skin, frantic to assimilate information before his window of plausible deniability closes. 

All too soon, Eames’ eyes flicker over to him and Arthur averts his gaze smoothly, he thinks. He doesn’t trip as he approaches the one stall with the floor toilet and undoes his fly, though it’s a near thing. He’s parsing the jerky, half-seen images that entered his brain in that quarter-second glimpse. The stall has no door and he straddles the drain without squatting, letting his piss fly in a perfect arc as the images mentally assemble into sense.

He barely hears the door close, presumably behind a departing Eames, when the script he’d seen above the bandage resolves into a word in his mind’s eye.

_Arthur_

No. He rejects the idea, but the image is burned on his retina now. Some horrible gothic font. But his name. Undeniably, his name. Off-center, near a kidney, the A emerging from a thicket of soft belly hair. 

Over the next few days, Arthur wrestles with what he’s seen. At first, he’s horrified. That font. What on earth. A tattoo. They’ve never so much as exchanged handjobs. What the fuck.

A day later, he finds that he’s intrigued. When? When had Eames gotten it? Sometime in the past three years, evidently. Arthur scours his mental information banks for times when Eames was tender about the midsection, but comes up empty. He knows he’s focusing furiously hard on the “when” because he’s far too scared to start wondering about the “why.”

He ends up staring at Eames uncontrollably for the rest of the job. Eames takes notice, to judge by the increasing frequency of his confused looks. Confused looks which suddenly transform into soft smiles, about six hours before they have to put the mark under and earn their paycheck.

At the end of the job, instead of the usual laddish clap on the shoulder, Eames leans in to give Arthur a kiss on the cheek in farewell. It lands closer to his ear, a confusing tangle of sensations: velvet pressure, hot breath, gravelled murmur. He knows that Eames whispered something, but Arthur is too disoriented from the smell and the feel of those lips to comprehend what he’s said. 

The next few months involve Arthur playing an increasingly humiliating game of chicken with his phone, as he tries to convince himself not to text Eames. _What did you say?_

But he jumps at the chance to work with him again.

Present day: February 14, Vietnam 

Arthur is surprised to see that the staff at the hotel have decorated for a western holiday, and such an absurd one, at that. They’re clearly pandering to the largely American clientele. There’s a couple at the front desk, holding hands tightly and taking turns staring at each other. Probably adventurous honeymooners. 

He goes to his room and closes the blinds against the setting sun. In the mirror, he unbuttons his shirt, removes it. Raises the hem of his t-shirt, revealing where the bandage is now off. The name blares across his skin like a beacon. 

Arthur’s never planned to have a tattoo like this, but as soon as the plane set down in Hanoi, he knew. He knew what he was going to do, even though he never let himself articulate it. He risked blood-borne infection and skin disease and shame and regret. He inhales deeply and realizes he’s a little bit proud of himself. His fingers stroke over the ink and he thinks, “This is it.”

He takes the rest of his clothes off and puts on the panties and garter belt, dark red and strappy. They form the perfect frame for the script. Then he redresses and checks the time. Eames already said he would be in his room. They’d carefully not acknowledged what day it is.

There’s a knock at his door, which unsettles him. Probably housekeeping. He answers it.

It’s not housekeeping. 

“May I come in?” Eames asks. He’s changed his shirt, smells musky and citrusy. Arthur’s heart pounds. 

“I thought we were going to meet in your room,” he says, his voice surprisingly steady.

“I got impatient.” He looks Arthur up and down, his gaze a tangible thing. Heat pours over and through Arthur. 

Okay. Okay, he’s going to do this. He’s still got some whiskey on the bureau.

“Drink?” he lobs over his shoulder, watching Eames seat himself on the made-up bed. Eames nods. Arthur hands him a glass, sips his own. His hand is shaking, and he’s pretty sure Eames has clocked that.

“Where should we go?” Eames asks, putting his glass down and leaning back on the bedspread. 

“Anywhere you feel like,” Arthur says, steeling himself. “But first, I. I need to tell you something.”

Eames sits up a bit straighter, confusion on his face. 

“I saw something, in London. That maybe… maybe you didn’t want me to see.” 

If anything, Eames looks more confused. Arthur takes a huge breath, lets it out slow.

“The tattoo, Eames.”

“The… but it wasn’t healed yet.” Eames’ eyes are wide.

“Not the new one. The other one. My name.”

There’s a pause, and then Eames looks shifty, disconcerted.

“That?” he says, patting himself where Arthur is embedded in his skin. He chuckles awkwardly. “I can see why you’d want an explanation. I, er, I lost a bet.” 

Arthur feels the moment skid away from him, his stomach plummets. 

“A friend of mine, well, a fuckbuddy rather, MI6 bloke, kind of a nightmare actually… I’d dared him to get a cross tattooed on his hand.”

Arthur is barely listening. His body is engulfed in flames of humiliation. He wants to flee but Eames has cornered him in his own room to reveal how delusional Arthur’s hopes have been. There’s nowhere to go.

“So I ended up getting his name on my flank. I hadn’t met you yet, actually. I hope you didn’t think--”

Fuck this, he thinks, who cares where he goes? Arthur just goes. 

The door slams behind him. He doesn’t give a fuck how tawdry and childish he must seem. He races down the hallway and into the elevator just as it’s closing. He’s out on the street, his breath heaving fast and panicked in his chest as he looks left, right. There’s a vendor selling flowers to that same damned couple to the right, so he takes off the other way. 

He can’t… he can’t believe it. A different Arthur. A fuckbuddy. A long time ago. 

If Arthur - himself, the non-MI6 Arthur - knew anything about tattoos, he’d have known that it was old. He would have _known_ it hadn’t been for him. But he didn’t because he doesn’t know anything, nothing at all. He stumbles as he avoids an itinerant monk on the sidewalk. He should be a monk. He should never again attempt--

A hand comes down firm on his shoulder, stopping him. He’s turned around and looking at Eames’ flushed face before he can comprehend what’s happened. 

“Please,” Eames begins, “just listen to me.” 

Arthur swallows hard and scowls, also hard. “What.” 

“If I had known you then, it would have been for you. It wouldn’t have taken a dare, a bet. I would have done it because you’re the most gorgeous, infuriating, brilliant man I’ve ever known. I’m sorry I misunderstood-- I thought you were disturbed by it, I just didn’t want you to think--”

All the hormones that have been flooding Arthur with shame and self-directed rage abruptly recede. Into the vacancy rush all the good chemicals, a rising tide of joy. 

He stops Eames’ mouth with his own. 

They stand there, touching only at the lips for a shocking, bright moment, and then they each surge into the other, hands grasping and pulling, removing all space between them. Eames’ hand lands on Arthur’s hip and squeezes, causing a flinch and whimper. It’s healed but still tender. Eames pulls back slightly.

“You alright?” he murmurs, eyes still focused on Arthur’s mouth. Arthur nods, then grabs Eames’ hand and drags him back down the sidewalk, pushing past vendors and tourists and carts. They burst through the hotel main entrance, drawing stares. Arthur glares and barrels onward, not stopping until they’re back in his room. 

The door is barely shut before Arthur’s shucking his trousers, and Eames sucks in a sharp breath. “Slow down, love,” he says on a shaky chuckle. “We’ve got time.”

“No, I…” Arthur shakes his head. “I need to show you.” 

“Mmmm, I see,” Eames hums delightedly as his eyes take in the garters holding up sleek stockings. 

“Not that,” he replies, a touch exasperated with himself and with Eames. The garters and hose are sexy, but they aren’t the point. He shouldn’t have bothered. 

“This.” 

He lifts his shirt up to uncover his new, his only tattoo. Eames.

Eames freezes, his eyes glued to Arthur’s side. For one heart-stopping second Arthur’s convinced he’s put off, horrified, but then he walks forward, hand outstretched, fingers trembling.

Arthur closes his eyes. He shivers at the touch of Eames’ hand, stroking reverently. 

“Arthur,” he says softly. “I….” he trails off and Arthur opens his eyes to watch him sink down to his knees on the carpet, his mouth brushing against Arthur’s skin, where he’s branded himself.

Arthur lets one hand drop onto Eames’ head, running his fingers through his hair, pressing his head closer still. 

Eames looks up, and there’s an expression on his face that needs no words to comprehend. 

“Would you like to see mine?” 

Arthur smiles, twitterpated and stupid with it. “I already have,” he says. 

“No, I mean.” Instead of explaining, Eames rises to his feet, hands unbuckling his belt. Arthur watches, eager to see everything that will be revealed once Eames takes down his pants. Eames steps out of his trousers but doesn’t push down his underwear, where a very promising bulge awaits. Instead, he too lifts his shirt hem. 

“I told you this was for you,” he says, the words making no sense to Arthur. There’s a circle and a square. No, a cube. A die. And a chip. Both red. The die overlaps the chip, supporting it, holding it upright. The chip looms above the die, protective. 

Arthur traces the ink, watches his fingertips skate over Eames’ skin. He looks up to meet Eames’ green gaze, and they come together, finding their way to the bed with nothing further needing to be said.

Afterwards, they lie in the circle of each other’s arms, the six sides of the room encompassing them. They stroke the places where they’ve laid their claim, placed their bets, and then they sleep.


End file.
